Owen Jones
Maya - Illusion
Lao people were friendly enough and Vientiane was easier for Westerners that most Thai cities including most areas of Bangkok, but there was so little to do and it was so expensive.
On Monday morning, they got up just in time not to miss breakfast, ate slowly and then checked out. They booked a taxi to the bridge but asked him to wait at the embassy first. The embassy opened for the collection of visas after lunch at one-thirty, so they had plenty of time to start their long-winded return trip home.
Sitting in the bus to Phitsanulok, both were analysing their ‘holiday’. Both thought that it had gone well considering and both felt better for having spent so much time alone away from Lek’s distractions in the village. As she felt the tablets kicking in again, Lek reached out under the blanket and took Craig’s hand and he squeezed it back.
3 The Death of a Neighbour
Lek and Craig both benefited from their trip to Laos in that their relationship grew closer and they started spending some time with each other again. Craig still had to work all day, but Lek made a point of meeting him at Nong’s for a couple of hours at five o’clock every day, whereas these meetings had dropped to once of twice a week over the previous year and even then Lek had spent most of the time on the phone talking to her daughter in Bangkok or her cousin in Pattaya.
Craig had actually wished she would stop coming, because he found it distracting and unsettling to have her talking loudly in a language he couldn’t understand to people he couldn’t see when he was out for a relaxing break between two long sessions of work. More than once he had reminded her that it was a mobile phone, so why didn’t she ‘walk over there’ and chat to her family.
It hadn’t helped their relationship any, but it had been at rock bottom anyway.
Now she was being ‘nice’ to him again, but he couldn’t help wondering how long it would last. Craig was sure that either she was menopausal or worried about something and the ‘something’ could only be her daughter or money or both.
“How are your web sites doing, my dear?”
“I have a hundred and fifty-two now, but the global recession is still hitting them badly,” he replied somewhat shocked at the sudden interest. This was probably the second time she had asked about his work in eight years.
“I’m thinking of scaling back to a hundred web sites or less, because I cannot write enough articles every month to keep them all looking fresh. At one five-hundred-word article a week for each site that would mean writing twenty-two articles a day or eleven thousand words a day. That is unsustainable...”
Craig looked up but he could see that he had lost her.
“If I am going to be writing... Lek, Lek! If I am going to be writing eleven thousand words a day for web sites, I might as well write a book, mightn’t I?” he joked.
“Yes, dear. You could write a book on Thailand. Write some stories. Maybe they sell better than web sites.”
“I was joking. I’ve never written a book in my life... I wouldn’t know where to start. Writing five-hundred-word articles on interesting topics is easy enough, when you get into the swing of it. I can do five a day for a few days, but I can write three a day for ever. However, three a day means twenty-one a week which will only support twenty-one web sites, but twenty-one average web sites won’t provide enough income to support us.”
Craig loved to talk about his work, but no-one else in the village shared his interest and he never met anyone else. Or rarely, so whenever anyone showed the slightest interest, he tended to go over the top, as he was now. Lek tried to maintain a level of interest, but she had no idea what he was talking about.
“Darling, you know me. I care about people: my family and my friends, I know nothing about machines and computers. It just goes in this ear and out that one, but nothing sticks. I am stupid, I have no education. I never go high school and never go to university. My mother not have money to send me. That is why I want Soom to go. I don’t want her stupid like me, I want her clever like you.”
It always broke his heart to hear her talking about herself like that.
“You went back to school a few years ago, didn’t you? I thought that was for high school.”
“Yes, now, at the age of forty, I can prove that I am as clever as a sixteen-year-year old. Great! I am still twenty-four years behind. Do you think anyone wants to give a job to a forty year old woman with the brain of a sixteen-year-old? No, I am on the scrap heap. I am even not fit enough to work in the rice fields like women half my age again. My Mum is sixty-er, er... something and she can still work in the fields all day if she has to, but I would not last one hour and you would not last ten minutes.”
She started laughing at the thought of him planting or cutting rice by hand. She found the mental image of Craig up to his ankles in mud hilarious. “I am sorry,” she said with a hand before her mouth, “but when I think of you..., you standing in sloppy mud planting rice, complaining about your bad back and wanting a cold beer because there is no shade... Oh, my Buddha. You are very funny. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
“You working with all the old ladies and they are working faster than you and you complaining and wanting a chair, a beer and an umbrella in the wet rice field... Oh, my Buddha.”
It was nice to see her laugh again. She touched his hand, clinked glasses and put hers to her lips. At the last moment she had to put the glass down again as another mental image caused a laughing fit.
“Oh, I must tell my Mum later! I will tell her that you want to help her in the field next time, but she must take a chair and some beer for you.” And she was laughing again. Craig didn’t mind in the slightest being the butt of her jokes – anything to see her laugh again, He wished she would do it every day.
“Oh, Lek, that money we borrowed from Billy in Barry. I had forgotten all about it. Had you? Anyway, I sent it back to him by PayPal today and thanked him very much. He pulled us out of the shit there big time, didn’t he?”
“Yes. How stupid we were. I liked Billy the first time we met him in O’Brien’s. And the other guys we used to sit with on market day when it was freezing cold outside... Look at the time, Soom will be thinking that I have forgotten her.”
At six o’clock Lek always phoned her daughter. It was their designated time; it was the time she should be arriving in her bedsit from university or ‘school’ as Craig called it. Lek would never demean such a respected establishment of higher education with the word ‘school’, although she had respect for schools in their place. She realised that Craig could be so flippant about university because he had attended one and familiarity breeds contempt, as they say, but she didn’t like him using that term when referring to Soom’s university.
Lek looked forward to phoning Soom every day, so took up her mobile and rang her.
“Hello, where are you now?” - the standard greeting - “Have you eaten yet? Good... Are you well? How did university go today? Good.... Good. Me? I’m fine. Yes, he’s all right too. He’s sitting here with me now, drinking beer. Soom says ‘Hello’. He says ‘Hello to you too’. What are you going to do tonight? Yes, that’s right... Do your homework, read a bit, watch TV for a while and then early to bed
“Tomorrow is another day. You want to be fit and bright for every day in university. You have worked hard to get there, now you have to work hard to stay there. You will do that, I know you will..
“OK, yes, OK. Phone me if you need anything at any time of the night or day. We are well, don’t worry about us. Gran is fine too. She sends her love. Yes, OK, thank you. We miss you too. Bye-bye for now. Bye...
“That was Soom. She says she misses us... and you. I mean including you. She is doing well though. I miss her too. I want to go down to see her. Maybe stay with her for a few days, what do you think?”
“If you stay with her in her bedsit, then I can’t go. That’s what I think, but I don’t mind, if you want to go on your own. I can survive here alone, on my own, with absolutely no-one to talk to for two days, if that is what you want.
“I know how much you miss her. I don’t mind, really! I’m only joking with you. Look, it’s, er, Tuesday today, so why don’t you go down on Friday morning, stay the weekend while she’s off school and comeback on Monday morning?”
“University, dear. Soom finished school last year – nearly eighteen months ago. She does go in on Saturday morning for private lessons, but that is a good suggestion of yours. OK, I’ll book a seat in the minibus and leave on Friday. Thank you for understanding, darling.” She cupped her mouth and whispered the words ‘I love you. Choop, choop.’ “You would only be bored in Bangkok anyway. It’s no good you coming, is it?”
It was true that Craig did not like big cities, but he said, “Yeah, right! I’d be bored rigid what with all those bars, girls, strip joints, A-Go-Go bars and everything. I mean... you get too much of that around here.... Enough to last a man a lifetime.”
Lek thought he was joking, but even after eight years, she was rarely completely sure. They both had such different senses of humour and Thai humour was different from the British variety anyway. Probably Asian was different to European in general. So she put on a weak smile and studied his face.
“Only joking. I’m happy for you to go and I’m happy to stay here. All alone, while you’re out going everywhere in Bangkok. Boring old Bangkok. While I live in up in Baan Suay, the only place I’ve ever lived without a pub.”
Now she knew he was joking. Maybe speaking the truth in jest, but that was his way. He didn’t mind her going and didn’t mind staying at home.
“OK, thank you my dear. I’ll let Soom have a shower and then ring her with the good news. I am really looking forward to it. Isn’t it exciting? We haven’t been separated for more than a few hours for eight years.”
He had had his little joke, so he didn’t push his luck. He just smiled back at her. He was wondering if he could get his friend Murray to come around and take him out in the car. He had never explored the local village ‘bars’ – if there were any.
Just as Lek was about to phone her daughter, Nong came running out.
“Lek! Lek! There has been an accident. Mrs. Ng just told me that a petrol tanker has knocked two local ladies off their motorcycle in the lane. One is dead and the other has less than a ten percent chance of pulling through. Who is it?”
“Oh, how awful! But how would I know? I’ve been sitting here for the last hour.” She told Craig about the accident.”
“But no-one knows who they are?”
“I think some people know, but we don’t know,” she replied, wondering whom she could phone to find out who the victims were.
Nong spoke up after making a phone call. It never took her long to know the local gossip, it was why she was always busy, people called in for groceries and to find out what was going on. In the absence of a local paper or radio station, Nong was the repository of all local knowledge.
“One was that young Mrs. Ma who lives... lived just round the corner. The one with two young children and another on the way. She’s the one that died outright and the other one was your next-door neighbour, Joy. They’d been out shopping apparently and were coming back through the lane when BANG! Head on into a petrol tanker making deliveries around the villages.
“He was actually due here, but was redirected down the lane by road-workers. The driver is beside himself with grief. The doctor had to sedate him. Joy is in hospital, but she was dragged a little way by the truck so she’s in a very bad way. They think she’ll die. Just a ten percent chance of pulling through.”
Craig couldn’t follow much of the conversation, but he could see other women gathering at the shop to discuss it. When Lek started explaining to Craig, Nong darted off, anxious to tell the others what she knew and maybe learn a few more details.
When Lek got up to join the other women, Craig slipped into the shop and helped himself to another Chang. He knew that there would be no decent service for at least an hour and he didn’t mind helping out. Eagle-eyed Nong spotted him in her peripheral vision and nodded him her consent.
Craig was roused from his daydreams, by a collective sharp intake of breath, but he could guess what had happened.
When she had all the information there was to be had, Lek rejoined Craig. “Joy just died too. Isn’t that just awful? Ma had two young children and was just pregnant with a third and Joy, well, she is or was a grandmother, but only fifty years old and looking after her daughter’s baby... and her husband’s not well. I know you don’t like him much, but you used to get on well with Joy, didn’t you?”
“Yes..., we never actually spoke because we couldn’t, but when she saw me sitting here she always used to shout ‘go home’. I used to like to think that she meant ‘go home to your wife’ and not ‘go back to Britain’. She probably didn’t know any other words in English. Yes, I liked her... she used to ask me to dance at parties, remember?”
“Yes, I liked her too. You realise what this means, eh? I won’t be going to Bangkok this weekend. Not if they have the normal seven-day ceremony. Still, Bangkok will still be there next week, so no rush.
“Perhaps, Soom ought to come back to pay her respects. She has known Joy all her life. I must phone her now. Are you all right for ten minutes?” She inspected his bottle, “OK, I’ll get you a fresh one first. I think I’ll have one too. It’s no good waiting for Nong, I’ll get them myself.”
As soon as Lek had sat down, she was back on the phone to Soom.
“Soom can’t come back until Friday. She finishes early on Fridays and can cancel her..., what name did you say again? Her ‘tutorial’ on Saturday morning, then, if she goes back on Sunday afternoon, she won’t miss any classes, so that’s all right, isn’t it? Maybe I could go back with her. Couldn’t I?”
“Well, obviously you could, but you won’t see much of her during the week and if you only get to see her every few months, why use up your visit so soon after she has come home? Why not leave it a month and then go down? That way you see her twice in two months. Sounds better to me.”
”Yes, maybe you are right. We’ll see what happens.”
“Well, when Soom goes back, Joy’s funeral will not yet be over, so that is another reason to put it off for a while. Look, I’m not trying to stop you going... I know that it is going to happen one day, but I want you to get the maximum effect from your visits. That is all. Think about it.”
There was no longer a bristle of gossip among the twenty or so women gathered at the shop, they had become hushed. Talking in whispers out of respect for the double fatality. Two women, one in her twenties and one just turned fifty dead, killed not a hundred metres from the safety of their homes by a truck that shouldn’t have been there, that had never travelled that route before. Two husbands and three children left behind and one baby dead with its mother, still unborn.
People talked in hushed voices about who or what had sent the petrol tanker to kill these women and wreck the peace of their families for months, years and decades to come. People talked of never going down the lane at night again lest they should come across the ghosts of Joy and Ma walking back and fore along that isolated lane doomed forever to keep trying to get home to their children.
When they left Nong’s at seven o’clock it was already beginning to get dark. Lek clung to Craig’s arm, petrified that she would meet Joy looking for someone to take care of her family in her absence. When they entered their garden, they could see the family gathering next door.
One group of men were putting out rows of chairs, erecting awnings and blocking the lane to cars, while another group were setting up the P.A. that would relay the monks’ ceremony to those sitting outside and play the funeral music.
They had already brought Joy back from the hospital and half a dozen older women were preparing her body to lie in the refrigerated casket, which would be its final resting place for its last seven days on Earth.
“I want to go to Bangkok now, Craig. I am scared. What can I say to Joy, if I see her with her head smashed in and she asks me to help take care of her family?”
“She never hurt you when she was alive, did she? So why do you think she is going to try now?
“If you meet her, just say ‘Hello’ and if she asks you to take care of her family, tell you can’t because you’re going on holiday to Bangkok soon. I’m sure she’ll understand. She’s not stupid and has family nearby anyway. Advise her to ask them. Tell her I’m a handful.”
“You are never serious. This is serious...”
“Hold on a minute. OK, I like to joke, I accept that, but I am being serous about Joy. If she asks you, just tell her that you are too busy to do a good job. Tell her to ask someone else. What’s wrong with that? That is what you would have said if she had asked you yesterday when she was alive, so why not say it now? Nothing has changed except she hasn’t got a body any more.”
“Oh, don’t say that. Oh, my Buddha. I won’t sleep for a week until she’s gone. I know it. Oh, my Buddha...”
“Look at it this way. With all the worry, sleepless nights and helping out next door, you will probably loose those extra pounds you have been putting on, won’t you?”
“Oh, thank you very much. I’m scared and depressed and you call me fat!”
“Joke, my dear. Just a joke.”
She tried to smile.
“But, it might work. Every cloud has a silver lining, so they say,” he added as he nipped into his office.
Lek was truly worried about Joy’s ghost, or ‘Pi’ in Thai. She had been to hundreds of funerals before but never because of such a violent, unexpected death involving a close neighbour and friend. She went next door to pay her final respects before the monks arrived at about seven thirty.
After the four monks had performed their duties for the first day, which took about thirty minutes, a rushed meal was passed around those who remained behind - about fifty people. It was a very quiet affair compared to average funerals – the whole village was in deep shock. Nobody liked to voice their thoughts about the evil spirit that had caused the petrol tanker to be in the lane and to kill, on its one and only rerouting down there, two women who had made that journey hundreds of times safely before.
Attendees at the funeral wanted to get home early in case there was an evil spirit lurking in the shadows.
When Lek went home at nine o’clock, she had a friend walk her up the drive to her front door even though it was only fifteen yards, the lights were on and Craig was working in his office. He had never seen her that affected by a death – not even that of one of her best friend, Goong, six years before. Goong had died at an even younger age than Joy, but she had been ill for a while, accepted her Fate – even welcomed it - and had had time to sort out her affairs.
She hovered about in Craig’s office, talking incessantly about one thing and another, but mostly about things that she would not normally concern him with. Then it dawned on Craig that Lek was frightened to go to bed alone in the dark. Actually, it was much worse that that, she was even too frightened to shower alone, so Craig did the right thing: he shut his computer down and suggested an early night. Lek leaped at the chance and held on to him tightly all night.
Craig got to sleep with difficulty, as had been the case since he was an infant, but Lek didn’t remember sleeping at all, which was most unlike her. She was waiting for her friend and neighbour to come walking through the wall looking as if she had been dragged through a hedge backwards.
∞
Whatever state of consciousness they were both in, they were immediately aware when the lorry-load of huge speakers roared into life at five a.m. the next day The speakers were less than twenty yards away, but their purpose was to call any women in the whole village who wanted to help prepare food for the evening’s ceremony. This was a cathartic event for people who were grieving. Instead of sitting at home alone while the men were in the fields working, they could sit together, chop, peel and prepare vegetables and meat and generally keep each other company.
Lek jumped out of bed and prepared to join in. There was no way Craig could sleep again, so he just started work. He understood that this had to be done and it didn’t bother him in the slightest. Lek was showered, dressed and out of the house in fifteen minutes, which Craig did resent a little, wanting to ask whether she had seen Joy’s Pi in the night.
Later he was glad that he hadn’t had the opportunity, deciding that it would probably have caused a problem. Sometimes, he just didn’t know when it was inappropriate to make a joke.
The music was turned down a lot when they had most of the helpers that they were expecting, about thirty minutes later, which made it feel less like having his head in a kettle drum at a Jamaican beach party. Craig just got on with the daily routine of checking and answering his email and writing relevant articles for his web sites, but when he got up to put the hot water on to make his coffee, he remembered what Lek had said the evening before about writing a book on or set in Thailand.
He knew that Lek had no idea of his writing skills- how could she? She had never read any of his work because she couldn’t read English and none of her friends could have told her either. It was an intriguing idea and one that he may never have come up with on his own. At least, he hadn’t so far in his fifty-eight years. He took his coffee back to his desk and got back into his routine.
Another routine was established too for the duration of the funeral ceremony of seven days. Lek brought him some lunch from the funeral at about two o’clock and met him in Nong’s at five. He would then have to escort her to the house next door for fear of Joy’s Pi, he would go back to work and she would stay there until about nine, when someone would walk her home. Craig could follow all the events from his office and sometimes he went to sit on the patio to concentrate on the monks chanting at about seven thirty.
On the fifth day, Joy’s body was cremated at the usual time of three o’clock. Her friend had been cremated the day before. Craig could hear gunfire and fireworks coming from the Wat and the final acts of the ceremony were completed on the seventh day of her death.
Soom was back for the actual cremation which pleased her mother and Joy’s family. Death is taken very seriously in a Thai village despite the fact that they don’t fear it as Buddhists. Lek saw it as part of Soom’s training, that she should learn and observe the traditions that made sense to her and to Lek. Anything that could improve one’s Karma made ultimate sense. She wanted her daughter to have the best chance in life by using every tool at her disposal: physical, metaphysical and spiritual.
Normally, Lek would have played cards every night after a funeral, but she did not at this one. Whether that was because she was scared of ghosts and wanted to be home or whether she was trying to be nice, Craig never knew. In fact it was for both reasons in equal measure. She was not afraid of death, but she had been shocked by how sudden it could come and she wanted to be around to see her grandchildren.
The death of those two women had had a profound effect on her.
And so had the way Craig had talked about ghosts
